The present invention generally relates to a method and system for data rating for wireless devices, and in particular, to mobile or cellular phones and radio phones that are capable of moving from one transmission station to another in a communication network.
More specifically, the method and system of the present invention allows rating of a data communication session to be performed within the wireless device, such as a mobile phone. As a result, by accomplishing the rating within each mobile phone, the communication traffic between a mobile phone and the service provider is reduced thereby expanding the traffic handling capacity of the service provider. A system for rating and billing a voice communication session within a mobile phone is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,577,100 (the '100 patent), and 6,198,915 B1 (the '915 patent).
Advanced data communication services in the mobile telephony environment are becoming a reality. Short Message Service (SMS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution (EDGE), 1x, 1xRTT, short range radio frequency protocols (e.g., IEEE, 802.1 1.b) etc. are all examples of technologies that may be used to implement wireless data communication.
Wireless device users are demanding improved data services, and data carriers are hurriedly trying to develop solutions that would satisfy the demands of such users. However, traditional network-based billing systems are ill equipped to deal with some data carriers' current business practices or methods for billing for data services other than monthly subscription.
For example, monitoring and keeping track of data packets accurately for billing purposes at the network level is not a simple task, especially when such monitoring must be done in real time as required by prepaid and limited use services. When data packets are sent to a destination, they are usually routed via several nodes and networks before they reach their final destination. Traversing several networks presents a problem from a monitoring perspective because different networks and their respective equipment very often handle data packets differently.
Furthermore, typical network-based billing systems are generally equipped to deal with call detail records (CDRs). Such billing systems are usually dimensioned to be able to accommodate 3 or 4 CDRs per user per day. With the use of packet data, each packet generates its own detail record, referred to here as usage detail records (UDRs). A UDR is necessary because in packet switching communications each packet is transmitted to its destination separately via different routing paths. As a result, a UDR is needed for each packet in order to keep track of the status of such packet. The proliferation of a large amount of UDRs presents a capacity problem for many existing billing systems. For instance, a 30-minute session of GPRS may generate 10,000 UDRs or more at several serving nodes, an amount of UDRs which existing billing systems are not equipped to handle and for which purpose it may not be cost effective to upgrade.
Moreover, there is an additional challenge to billing data transmissions, particularly for GPRS. Most of the network equipment required to enable and implement GPRS reside at a base station controller (BSC), while the billing systems reside at a mobile switching center (MSC). The billing systems, accustomed to connecting to one or several MSCs, must now accommodate potentially hundreds of BSCs.
In the packet data environment, the network on many occasions may need to resend the same packet more than once, and possibly through alternate transmission paths. Since multiple UDRs may be generated for the same packet, network-based billing systems can only generate accurate billing on a per packet basis by gathering all of the UDR's from all of the serving nodes and reconciling them to determine successful delivery. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a cost effective method and system that is capable of rating packet data accurately without the complications and capacity burden inherent in traditional network-based billing systems.